Thread: Cyclops™ Safety Cameras for Garmin

Originally Posted by apmcs1

Pietu, thanks for the effort and files.
Just wanted to warn people if they don't know already that the Garmin Cyclops is not a very complete database. I was in the Los Angeles area a few weeks ago and had my Garmin and an Escort radar detector with GPS and their Defender database, of the ten redlight cameras I went by the garmin warned me about two, the Escort warned me on all ten.
I wish the North American Defender database that Escort uses was available for the Garmin! Some warnings are better than none but I was disappointed in the Cyclops in my area
Anyone have better experiences in their area?

There are another two possible explanations for your experience in LA. Firstly, the Cyclops files are directional which means that if a camera is pointed away from you [and captures only on-coming traffic for instance] the alarm wont be given. This is not the case with many other databases which alarm within a certain radius of the camera, regardless of it being directed at a different traffic stream to yours. The second possibility is the use of 'dummy' camera boxes. In many parts of the world the authorities rotate cameras and not all boxes are working, maybe this is the case with LA too. I use both Cyclops and SCDB together. Around where i live many fixed cameras are one-directional and only about half the camera-sites seem to work at any one time but unless you know which ones are 'live', then of course they have to be treated as such ['Every gun is assumed loaded' principal]. Cyclops somehow seems to have close knowledge of which ones are active, as i often don't get/do get an alarm from a particular site when the previous files gave the opposite. However SCDB will just keep 'going off' in both those situations and so it could appear that they have a more 'complete database'.

So maybe it's not that Cyclops is only warning you of 'some' but the other database is warning you unnecessarily.

The ultimate and ideal option for any driver is of course not to run reds or speed.

PS: This may seems obvious and i don't mean to offend you, but is there any chance that you are also only using the pre-loaded 'sample' file on your Garmin?